- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
- hardware@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
- hardware@lemmy.world
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Relatedly, Hisense also forces updates and disables use of the TV if you do not accept the update (via a full screen non-cancelable prompt).
I learned this the hard way after Hisense broke my TV via an update that I didn’t want and then refused to fix it even after 6 months of escalations and emails.
They’re not alone, either. I had to downgrade my Visio just to use the features that it shipped with. I’m sure this is illegal, but no one cares unless you’re rich.
I outright told them it’s illegal, since they are unilaterally altering the terms of any T&C agreements when we started using the TV and materially interfering with our ownership and use of the TV we purchased. They didn’t care. I then sent it to our state attorney general and nothing happened.
You can likely sue them in small claims court. Many states let you file for a couple hundred dollars and will give you 3x damages if you win.
The most likely outcome is they settle when the court date approaches or dont show and you win hy default.
There was a guy in Texas who thought a big tobacco company would settle out without showing, but instead he got counter sued to the tune of millions. That man? Rusty Shackleford.
There’s a good documentary about it.
I can neither confirm nor deny that @RustyShackleford@piefed.social is man of taste.
Time is a flat circle.
I know they’re different manufacturers, but TCL tried this shit and I just factory reset and never setup the Internet on it. I use an android TV box for the smarts.
Unfortunately the firmware was the issue, not just OS software. So factory-resetting didn’t help us. But yeah, that definitely radicalized me to the “never connect it to the internet” camp for future TVs.
Buying the TV and then not connecting it still rewards the bad behavior.
We have to boycott these fucks and lobby to get the behavior outlawed.
I mean, that’s great in theory. But the amount of manufacturers of non-smart TVs is tiny, and if you are interested in the best panels and display technology, refresh rates for gaming, etc (even removing affordability), it’s very very hard to just boycott if you want to have a modern TV at all.
Getting the ad-subsidized tech without the ads sounds like a win to me
You are paying for features you don’t use (such as Internet access). That’s not a win.
They’re saying the company may be selling the device for less than the cost to produce it expecting the low price to draw in consumers while their predatory ads rake in much more money, so buying it and never connecting it means they took a loss. I’m skeptical that companies would do that these days. More likely they overcharge for the physical hardware AND have predatory ad software, you know to maximize shareholder value.
Even if that were true, you’re still paying more than you would be for a “dumb” TV that doesn’t have those features. So everybody loses but the company selling the hardware still sees a sale. They lose a lot more if they pay the cost to produce and then never sell the device.
I got a TCL last year and it wouldn’t let me use the TV until I set up the internet. After 4 factory resets I figured out how to put it in store demo mode, and plugged in a separate streaming device that connects to the internet. Now I realize I could have connected the TV to the internet and then blocked it at the network level.
If you are using a network level block, make sure it’s a black hole and not just a DNS filter. I tried a DNS filter with a Roku and found that they bypass it with hardcoded values, even when the DNS server was statically assigned and DHCP assigned.
What you mean by black hole and filter? I blocked a bunch of tcl domains on my pihole and made my router drop everything in port 53 coming from every other device that wasn’t pihole. It seems to have worked for now… Is that a good solution?
Pi-hole blocks the name resolution. TV wants to go to Hisense.com, asks your Pi-hole where that site is. Your Pi-hole sees that Hisense is on a block list, so it says back to your TV “sorry, no idea how to get to that site, it must be offline.”
If the manufacturer wants to get around this, they program a public DNS in, like 8.8.8.8, or they hardcode the static IP for their website into the TV. Now when it wants to go to Hisense, it never has to ask your Pi-Hole where that site is, and it doesn’t get blocked. Heck, it probably won’t even show up on your Pi-hole’s logs.
If you black hole the site, then any traffic going out there gets dropped, and the hard-coded addresses on the TV don’t matter for shit.
I don’t think my tcl TV has it hardcoded because my pihole is always blocking tcl domains
![(https://media.piefed.social/posts/tU/o1/tUo1JxYy1qjG7g4.jpg)]
Your Pi-hole can only block the things that query DNS. Try this, ping a website you don’t normally go to, and you should see that show up in Pihole log. Next, ping an IP, I usually pick on 8.8.8.8, and see if that shows up in your Pi-hole’s logs. I’m fairly confident it won’t.
Where can I find out more about black holing a site?
Best I can do is Google it and read it to you. I’m a little knowledgeable about how a pihole works since I have my Net+, and I’ve set up a few Pi-hole’s (or the same one a few times tbh), but I’m definitely not a networking expert.
Cool! Thanks!
Wait till they start paying netflix to relay data for them :)
Yep, same issue with Firestick here.
Their Google TV models have a basic mode which lets you use it without internet with no bypassing.
As do the Roku TCL models. I currently have mine disconnected and plan to keep it that way.
Unfortunately manufacturers are starting to get wise to this as well. I recently bought a new Vizio smart TV with no intentions of connecting it to the internet and during the initial setup it kept very persistently insisting that it needed to be connected and after setup it constantly bitches at me that it’s not connected.
I did the same thing, their bullshit ad infested updates were the final straw,
My mom has a Hisense TV (because my parents invariably buy the very cheapest they can. They’d get a B&W if they could), and it just started something new - on start up, it now shows a static page of color wash, then you choose a channel. It doesn’t start on the same channel you turned off last night. Must be a new update came through. She let it sit on the screensaver all day, because it never occurred to her to try to change the channel.
Not a big deal, but weird, and NOBODY asked for this.
Chargeback?
Would have loved to. It was just over one year (right after the warranty ended as well), though.
Is that your card issuer’s policy? I’ve done a chargeback past a year.
I went through something similar and am trying to recall, I think I did look and it was past the time period. I should have tried. It’s +2 years now for me.
Edit: Words.
Hisense are also selling their TVs with different specs on different markets which is really annoying. In the United States you get Google TV but in Europe you get the awful Vidaa OS where you can’t install Google Play Store. And the big national TV streaming apps are missing in their own app store where I live.
I talked to a retail seller and he said that they ultimately had to stop selling them because they got so many complaints and returns. Maybe it’s a licensing issue or something but it’s just such a braindead decision that is damaging the brand.
Was gonna say, LG does the same thing.
So far my only TV that hasn’t forced things in an absurd way has been my Sony… Guess what Sony just did? (Sold their Bravia TV line to TCL…)
I’ve never connected my LG TVs to the internet and they work pretty well.
I hear you can jailbreak them, which is appealing to me.
No shit? I might have to try that, only problem is my spouse will kill me if I break it… (primary TV)…
Are people loading AOSP on there or something? I’m tired of the telemetry and ads LG built in, but my blocklists have seemed to block one of my LG TVs from working. I have a disabled adult in my home and I think Kodi might be too complex for them.
Nothing like Android no. You get the ability to install apps not available in the webOS store, homebrew basically. This is useful for running hyperion (open source project) for driving your own LEDs behind the TV for ambiance. I haven’t peeked in that scene in a year or two but last time I did, the latest TV’s or latest updated TV’s were not easily hackable.
The person I was talking to just said they had jailbroken WebOS (LG runs webOS not android) and could do whatever.
Mine’s never connected to the internet before, so I don’t really feel any need to jailbreak it. Though apparently you can ssh in and do stuff, and that sounds kinda cool.
Um…no they don’t?
Mine definitely does, disables applications and will lock the screen on update demand if you go long enough. At the bottom of the tv says it LG.
Sony offloaded manufacturing to TLC. They made a joint venture and TLC gets to manufacture and distribute them, Sony does development. Sony still has control. What we may see in the future is build quality decline. I doubt it’s gonna effect the software much.
My Hisense got worse in some ways after an update, support provided a file to get the previous firmware back and told me to disable updates. ¯\(ツ)/¯
Funny story, they actually did this to me before this all happened, and I was on a “I’m never going to update again” beta firmware that they gave me a link to, when the forced-update happened that broke my wifi. I didn’t disable any ADB-level processes, and I don’t think the system let me disable updates.
This future fucking sucks
This is the cyberpunk future that the 80s kids were so hyped for.
If anyone remembers the cyberpunk 80s TV show Max Headroom, then they know that TV was everywhere all the time in that universe. There was a scene in one episode where the police enter a suspect’s home and discover that she had an off switch on her TV. The cops react in shock to the fact, and one of them says “She’ll get twenty years for that.”
This universe also had “blipverts” which were a type of ad (advert…advertisement) that directly accessed your brain’s motivation to get you to buy something. The only problem was that blipverts also had a high chance of killing the people that watched it.
This was a TV show from almost 40 years ago now and it looks like these would be the things that are coming in the next few years from now.
Sci-Fi dystopia/Cyberpunk has called a lot of things correctly.
Rather, rich people are copying dystopias
The torment nexus is very profitable.
Alright Blank Reg.
As a 80s kid I don’t recall being hyped. If anything all sci-fi books were warnings for us. Younger generations embraced the black mirror shit thought.
Somewhere between Snow Crash and Hackers it became the dream instead of the nightmare.
True for hackers… Somehow it started my career… but snow crash feels a bit like Uber-gig which isn’t what I would look forward to.
Except a lot less fun. That one at least had cool lights, cool buildings, and flying cars. We got rotting infrastructure and Teslas.
changing the TV’s DNS servers or disconnecting it from the internet entirely.
Chiming in as an Australian budget VIDAA owner.
I spotted that this TV attempts to query 8.8.8.8, regardless of your DNS settings. I implemented a port 53 (DNS) redirect so those queries get resolved by my local server.
I also figured out which servers are serving up ads/tracking. I fired an email to Pete and got them added to his list. You’re welcome. I’m guessing a pi-hole would work with it.
https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php
I didn’t install the latest update, and probably never will. My TV contacts the unruly ACR servers, but the later firmware probably contacts nexxen.
People like you help to make the internet a better place — which matters a lot to me, because one of my most desperately held beliefs is that it is possible to take the hopefulness of the early internet and combine it with the wisdom of the last few decades to produce a more robust kind of hope
attempts to query 8.8.8.8, regardless of your DNS settings.
Streaming box / stream app makers have been working around local DNS for a long time. Sometimes of course they’re assholes that want to do shitty things and do this to make interdiction harder. But sometimes there are legitimate reasons. Ones I remember… users who don’t really understand what they’re doing can be overly aggressive with blocking and block things that are necessary for a particular service (causing support problems). Sometimes the ISPs DNS servers have shit performance, and using a well known commercial provider like cloudflare or google can improve performance at scale. It’s not always evil.
For other readers here is a tutorial to do DNS capture into a pihole server or other DNS
I fear the day these fucks figure out DOH or something. Not sure there’s any way to suppress or intercept that, short of just blocking all external traffic to the TV.
You need plain DNS to resolve the DoH server. Just block that.
Setting up DoH, I already provide the expected name AND an IP. No need for plain DNS at any step. There’s no reason a corporate TV can’t do that either.
A hardcoded IP is even easier to block.
Thank you for this. I will check later today on my own tv to see what its pulling in the background.
I have a HiSense TV and use ADB AppControl to disable/remove the telemetry or forced updates, and Projectivy Launcher to get a home screen/launcher that doesn’t show ads. Both are free and work really well. I don’t see trash on my homescreen anymore.
Good call!
I’d also like to share another option for folks: Flauncher. I’ve been using it for a few years - it’s very clean and lightweight.
You can set it as the default using ADB commands, or install it directly from the Play Store and use adhoc.
https://gitlab.com/flauncher/flauncher
Paired with a button remapper and set as default, I honestly haven’t seen the stock Android interface in years. (Like you, I’ve also used ADB to disable telemetry etc on TV, and replaced google play with Fdroid and Aurora)
PS: For the uninitiated, these are also worth installing:
https://smarttubeapp.github.io/
Gives you ad-free YouTube and then some.
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.courville.nova/
Lets you connect a hard drive to your router and create your own local media streaming frontend ala Netflix (or plug your hard drive / USB stick directly into your TV; it doesn’t care).
While it lacks some of the polish, it’s simpler than Jellyfin or Plex.
Until sept 2026…
Do you really think Google will approve those APKs once they have fully lockdown android (that includes Google TV)?
That’s why this push from google to kill the APK installation without their blessing infuriates me!
Well, in fairness, Flauncher and Nova launcher are on the play store. Irrespective, there are ways to install things now and then harden against google, such as blocking MAC address, Pinhole, disabling updates etc.
Alternatively, an android dongle (like Onn) is an option, however I would advise against Amazon Fire sticks and the like (telemetry, locked down)
Alternatively, make your own. A Raspberry Pi CM4 TV Stick that plugs into HDMI is one known option. If Andorid (and ASOP) become as locked down as you fear, there will be other options - Kodi, LineageOS TV etc.
If Android wants to shit the bed, no problem. It’s not the only game in town.
yeah, we’ll be working on grapheneOS tv boxes in a years time.
I will 100% jump over to it if that does turn into a thing
HDMI + A presentation mouse and bluetooth keyboard on an old Pixel?
A totally valid option I had not considered. Imo, the solution needs to be controlled by a standard remote. I tried for a couple years to get my family to use a media pc that used a media keyboard and no one would touch it. I turned it into a server and streamed to emby and now they will use it but only after I showed them it works even when the internet is down.
I TOTALLY feel you. I’ve wanted a good media remote for ages. seems like a project to repurpose a bluetooth remote to control a phone would be medium low difficulty
OMG me too!
Oh cool, I’ll have to checkout those other tools!
Well, I was mostly piggy backing on your comment / signal boosting what you were saying for the cheap seats. I figure anyone who’s hacking their TV via ADB commands doesn’t need my help with work arounds.
But heck, if and of those are of use, please enjoy.
I’m tempted to mentioned a good “yarr me harties” source here too, but I don’t want to teach anyone how to suck lemons.
I basically left it vanilla after switching the launcher and borking the updates. We use emby for our home streaming but I am always looking for extra functionality
Stremio is also an option.
I don’t have an Android tv but if that day ever comes, very glad options like these exist.
That’s great, but people who don’t already own one shouldn’t support this garbage company.
No doubt. The market is shriveling up for people who want a new tv that isn’t garbo. Outside of commercial displays which are like 3-4x as expensive and have lower image quality, I don’t know of anyone making dumb tvs in a 55" plus size. Yes, you can opt not to hook them up to the internet but in a house with non-tech people, its a huge hassle to get them to want to use anything other than the built in apps. Even diy set top boxes running on a pi or shield are not as user friendly for kids or grandparents.
IF YOU BUY ANY TV, DO NOT CONNECT IT TO THE INTERNET.
Televisions were never meant to be smart devices. There’s no reason your screen should have software of its own. That would be like your face having a mind of its own.
Ummm, <eldrich horror rant text>
Cell modems are getting cheaper and cheaper, it’s only a matter of time before cheap smart TVs will flood the market with always-on telemetry and intrusive personalized ads.
Well then I guess I make the room a giant faraday cage.
Like the other comment said, if you drive a car made after 2014, don’t bother. You drive a rolling tracking beacon regardless of what you do with your smart devices…
That sounds like a great reason to return it and buy used lol
Until a few years later when all the used TVs have cell modems. The same thing is already happening in the used car market, it’s getting harder and harder to find a reliable vehicle that doesn’t have a cell modem and a long T&C that let’s them spy on you.
I haven’t experience this myself but I’ve read that some newer TV’s are forcing you to connect to the internet before you can do anything else.
Not to mention it seems like the apps on a smart tv get ignored when it comes to updates.
The apps available on the TV may work when it’s new but quickly become nonfunctional because of a lack of updates. Best to use something else to stream, hopefully something more trustworthy.
But why not give AI to the TV???
My face’s mind sits right behind my face.
Don’t let your TV be on the internet.
Okay, so strike Hisense products from the list of brand I’ll ever buy from
The list is getting pretty big.
This is why, for years, I’ve been trying to point out that “if you don’t like it, just don’t buy it” isn’t good enough. Boycotts aren’t enough; we have to force the law to change to prohibit the abusive corporate behavior.
I agree 100%. Nothing we do is good enough because it’s a game of cat and mouse. They do something, people react. They do something else, they react.
Right now I own a Hisense because it’s 75" and cost me $300. It has a decent enough picture and sound. Works for all of my uses.
It has never seen the internet nor will it. I use my 6 year old shield for apps, mostly of which is my own content.
In case they decide to use any subsidiary or or partner tech company to daisy chain internet (I don’t put it past any of these guys) I have a blacklist on my firewall that catches most stuff trying to go out.
I have done everything I can, but it won’t be enough at some point.
They won’t stop until laws pass that stop them (actually stop them and not slap on the wrist).
At this rate it is easier to do a whitelist than a blacklist
I have a Hisense that I bought late last year and have never connected it to the internet (I stream everything through my PS5) and boyhowdy does that TV take every chance it gets to let me know I’m not connected lol
I got a Hisense tv in November and never connected it to the internet. Now I am extremely pleased that I never connected it.
They can’t force me if I don’t connect it to the internet
I can imagine future TVs refusing to work without an always-on internet connection.
I can imagine them shipping TVs with built in cellular data just for ads
… and exactly 2 weeks later modders will have figured out how to get their hands on the yummy free unlimited data inside it.
SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP don’t let them hear this!
…what am I saying? And idea like that they’ve had, just waiting for the price to be right. heh
Or having prebaked fallback ads.
It’s going right back to the shop, if that’s the case. Not accepting an HDMI input means it’s not fit for purpose.
I saw an unboxing for a TV for a Chinese market and it refused to start until the owner paired it with a Chinese phone otp for “age verification” 😉
🙈
Bet there are children that need protecting!
We need openWrt for TVs :(
This. Have played with similar devices in the past and I was surprised how many of these devices are running standard Linux kernel with some custom engineered distros. Projects like Buildroot, OpenWRT, Busybox and a few others are what the vendors use to roll their own builds.
A few of them agressively lock down the bootloaders in an attempt to (try to) prevent people from owning the device they’ve paid retail price for. Many don’t really bother. The good news is, that such measures are relatively easy for experts to circumvent and break down. This, of course, is not cheap, but needs to happen only once, often for more than a single model. Some kind of bounty-based system could provide incentive and financing for such efforts.
Retail price or rental price lol
I believe some custom firmware for TVs exist, the issue is that they are relatively new pieces of tech, while routers have existed for a comparatively long time.
cfw on smart TVs would be difficult in the first place due to the TVs’ heavily TiVo-ized nature (pun not intended)
How hard is it for companies to just make a good screen screen with the necessary ports any nothing else.
We are all losing our minds.
It’s textbook rent-seeking behavior. They discount the TV $201 to undercut someone else, and make up the difference selling the ads over the life of the TV.
This is how SO many things work, it’s only surprising that it’s taken this long. If you watch YT on this fancy TV, you’re getting the same thing.
I guess it’s hard when they’ve probably factored in ad revenue in the pricing. It’s not a new practice - it’s been done with cheap Chinese smartphones that were sometimes sold below the cost of hardware and production.
It’s terrible, I agree. Brands like this go into a list of offenders that I’ll make sure to avoid in the future.
I had a 65" Hisense TV for just over a year, and a firmware update bricked it. It was stone dead, and Hisense wouldn’t even try to repair it. So I spent a little extra money and got a Samsung instead. And once it was set up, I turned off its wifi…just in case.
Hisense can eat a bag o’ dicks.
My first 4K TV was a Samsung. The last update broke eARC making the Samsung home theater in a box thing I had much more inconvenient.
My 2nd (free in a raffle) Samsung 4K TV connected to my WiFi without a password when a guest in the house casted a video to it despite on setup refusing to consent to any web things due to privacy concerns. Kinda interesting and concerning.
I haven’t bought a TV in a decade. What kind of setup is required? Why would it need internet access for that?
LG work out the box without internet.
I let my Vizio TV connect for firmware updates as it has an issue that they’ve improved but I immediately turn off wifi and wipe the connection details right after.
What could have go wrong by connecting a screen to internet!?
Humanity.
